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Double Bass Bach Suite 1 - questions from Hillwilliam country

#81
Chris Fitzgerald said:
Still working on these as a practice/technique fallback. I remember someone saying they had an interesting key to play the 5th suite in where everything lays better, but I can't remember what it was. Anyone?
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I love this thread. I remember someone telling me decades ago that the greats can spend 10+ yrs perfecting these pieces. I looked down at the notation and said to myself, how can that be?

This thread is now 7 yrs old. I've been working on these for 15 yrs or more. Different instruments, different versions and they will never be 'mastered'. I love music.
 
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#82
damonsmith said:
Gerd Reinke made a really rough anti-Semitic joke while on a tour of Israel around the time that CD came out. The CD was universally panned, but I got a copy out of curiosity and it is horrendous! the rhythm is off, the pitch and tone are garbage.
I think he is blacklisted and only seems to play in Egypt now!
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This is an old thread, but I thought Id throw in an article about Reinke's joke
German's Hitler joke strikes the wrong note in Israel

In addition to the Carl Flesch Scale, he also edited a very popular book of orchestra excerpts for Schott (Orchester-Probespiel Kontrabass it is a copper colored cover). A lot of people own and use this book in Japan - most students never see the complete parts until they've played the pieces. Although this is a good book to have, and a good series of books, I'd be skeptical of anything Gerd Reinke is connected to. The playing on his numerous CDs is pretty rough, so I can only imagine a whole Bach suite mostly in the first position. No thank you.

I would imagine pizz would make things quite a bit easier to play across all those strings then string skips with the bow. If you're playing an octave lower.
I worked on the prelude to the fifth suite on my bass guitar (at pitch with a high c, fretless... Never got good enough to play for anyone). When legato is entirely in the left hand, you have to be very attentive.
Practicing this stuff pizz under tempo is great training for your left hand/right hand coordination. Left always moves before right for staccato or anything off the string, so pizz is great training for moving the left hand just before the beat.
Implying legato when playing pizz sounds hard.
 
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#83
Jon Stefaniak said:
Implying legato when playing pizz sounds hard.
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All of the points you made were good, but after having these in my life in one way or another for over 10 years this aspect has been the most important technical challenge. Along with intonation fine tuning, it's also been the single greatest growth area that has resulted from studying the suites. Some of the things I've learned about legato:

* Actual legato playing ( smooth connections with no new attacks) pizz is very limited compared to arco; with the bow you can connect notes together under with one stroke, but with pizz you basically only have hammers and pulls, both of which are limited to one or two notes after the attack.
* Implied legato playing (making lyrical connections while still attacking each note, as in pianistic legato) is more about shades of touch, right/left hand connection, and mental phrasing of the music. Thinking like a pianist helps, since in piano scores you are actually articulating each note on a percussion instrument, yet the phrase may be written as a slur covering multiple entire measures.
* When a string has to be re-articulated, there will always technically be a break in the line, as there would be with a change in bow direction; but based not he way we hear, if the left hand makes connections and the right hand stroke has enough velocity, that break can be short enough that the ear/brain still perceives the line as "connected". This is especially true if the line has an overall dynamic contour that the ear is following.

Very nerdy but interesting stuff!
 
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#84
Chris your work on these suites (video) and the sheet music you provided have been an invaluable tool for me. As a relative new comer to the DB it has helped me in numerous ways. It is now part of my everyday practice routine.
It has improved my sight reading and intonation as Bach"s music is so melodic and beautiful you know immediately if your intonation is off. I do not know how to express it but after playing these now for months my fingers seem to intuitively go to the right notes not just on these pieces but on other music as well. Trying to articulate the notes properly pizzicato has helped my right and left hand and trying to play them arco is still, well, a work in need of a lot of progress.
I have purchased a book that has all the cello suites in it and I practice playing the other suites as well. I cannot play them up to tempo as written but it is tremendous fun and a great tool. Thanks for working on these.
 
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#85
Ralph - that's wonderful to hear. :) Sometime this summer the second of those videos, featuring the Suite 1 prelude and accompanying material, will be released. I have plans to publish 2 videos from the suite in video format (in this case, Minuet and Prelude), then publish a full edition of the suite in iBook or print form, complete with fingerings, articulations, and text/musical examples involving approaches to the most difficult passages. I have gained so much from playing these, and would love to help spread the wonderful positive effects they have brought to my playing.
 
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#86
Chris Fitzgerald said:
Still working on these as a practice/technique fallback. I remember someone saying they had an interesting key to play the 5th suite in where everything lays better, but I can't remember what it was. Anyone?
Click to expand...
The Ricordi edition by Paolo Rizzi has the 5th suite in E minor. I haven't spent much time with this edition of the 5th suite, but the other suites I've played from the Ricordi/Rizzi are really great. Worth checking out, for sure.
 
#87
mtto said:
The Ricordi edition by Paolo Rizzi has the 5th suite in E minor. I haven't spent much time with this edition of the 5th suite, but the other suites I've played from the Ricordi/Rizzi are really great. Worth checking out, for sure.
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Thank you! I will see if our music library has this.
 
#88
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#90
Chris Fitzgerald said:
Still working on these as a practice/technique fallback. I remember someone saying they had an interesting key to play the 5th suite in where everything lays better, but I can't remember what it was. Anyone?
Click to expand...
Most of the people I know do it in A minor, a minor third down from concert pitch. The fifth and sixth suites are much harder than the rest from a technical perspective; the fifth suite in any key uses a lot of strange hand shapes in thumb position (and drop thumb), but with A minor you have an open drone for the chords, which the keys of C minor or G minor don't allow for as well.

My favorite recordings of the cello suites tend to lie closer on the more "historically accurate" side of the spectrum for the dances, but a bit more on the romantic side for the preludes; my absolute favorite one is Roel Dieltiens' recording for the dances (found here), but I think Yo-Yo Ma does the best preludes. The recording I have is the soundtrack to the Inspired by Bach video series; very expressive, but not overly so. The hard part about Bach for me, for me, from a musical (not technical) standpoint is the cognitive dissonance that comes from trying to interpret them; should a bass player aim to interpret them like how a baroque musician would or like a modern cellist would? I tend to lean toward the baroque side because I feel that in recordings approached from a more contemporary perspective that the feel and character of the dances is lost; Yo-Yo Ma's performances from the last twenty-ish years tend to balance the dichotomy of playing like a modern cellist and still being aware of the history and style of the time period really well.
 
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#92
Jon Stefaniak said:
But that really, really depends on the key, and register. A read through attempt of the 4th Suite prelude at pitch in orchestra tuning is way harder than the fifth in c, isn't it?
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I have never seriously tried playing the last three suites at pitch (just quick readings), but from my limited explorations 4 and 5 are about the same difficulty at pitch and 6 is practically impossible to do so.

At some point when deciding to learn a suite, one has to make the decision of "Is it worth it musically and technically to do this at pitch?" While it may be technically beneficial to learn 4, 5, and 6 at pitch, that might not be how they sound best on bass. Itt speaks volumes to me that Edgar Meyer and DaXun Zhang, who could probably do 4 and 5 at pitch if they wanted to, transpose 4 to D and 5 to A--Edgar plays 5 where the top three strings are in solo tuning and his long E is tuned down from C to B, while DaXun uses an EAEA tuning.
 
#93
It's linked in the video series thread, but I thought I would also link here in case there was any continuing specific Bach discussion from the history of this thread. This is the new "Bachrilege" video featuring the Prelude from suite 1. The score should be finished by the end of the week, and will be available for download then.



0:00 Performance of Suite I Prelude
3:12 Bachrilege fugue theme and titles
4:25 Episode introduction and intent of the series
5:26 Prelude overview and articulation review
10:42 Important excerpts: mm. 1-4
22:40 Important excerpts: mm. 19-23
30:55 mm. 23-29: Quasi rubato lyricism
34:22 Important excerpts from mm. 29-42
43:37 Conclusion and looking forward
 
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#96
Thanks so much for posting the score. After nearly 20 years of part-time plunking around on this very first piece, I've finally gotten it to a point of sounding almost passable.

I watched your video and noted several different fingerings that I'm going to investigate further.

I too attempt these pizz-only, so I'm looking forward to checking out the notation & markings, etc.
 
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#97
Way late to the party here, but it helps me to remember that Bach thought like a harpsichordist and the piece is written with the attack and articulation of a keyboard instrument with nearly nonexistent sustain in mind.

Which makes it fun to play on a violin family instrument in the way that pulling a roofing nail out of your foot is amusing.
 
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